Teeter for a Catastrophic Fall
by vega rin
Summary: Jane has been living on borrowed time, and Lisbon is fighting a losing battle.  Jane/Lisbon.  Spoilers for Fugues in Red.
1. Chapter 1

**Summary**: Jane has been living on borrowed time, and Lisbon is fighting a losing battle. Jane/Lisbon.

**Spoilers**: Up until 4x10, _Fugues in Red_.

**Disclaimer**: Not mine. Nope.

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><p><em>He can no longer tell where manipulation ends and affection starts. If this really were a con, it would be a failure of the highest grade.<em>

* * *

><p>Each morning, the office comes alive with low, familiar noises.<p>

With his eyes still closed, Jane listens to the quiet humming of electronics and catalogues staccatos of footsteps and the droning of an industrial vacuum cleaner on the carpet he walks on every day. It's like a giant and tender beast is yawning out loud and shaking itself awake, and its wakefulness slowly edges into Jane's mind and digs in, inch by inch, until awareness returns to him fully.

When he opens his eyes, the cracks on the tiled ceiling that he's long ago memorized greet him. The worn-in leather couch squeaks under him. He's comfortable with the familiarity of it all, even if it doesn't necessarily comfort him. He lifts a hand and runs it down his face. Once. Twice. And then he's up, swinging his legs over the side of the couch.

At his feet is a small, leather-bound book that slipped out from his grip overnight.

_I have spread my dreams beneath your feet_, he recalls the words as he picks up the book from the floor. His nighttime reading material has, at least for the moment, moved on from Blake. Not that Yeats is much more helpful to his sleep, but it's an improvement, of sort.

He leaves the couch momentarily to wet his face in the washroom and make himself a cup of tea. All the while his mind, now completely awake and needing a reprieve from thoughts and memories, busily grasps for distractions, something, _anything _new to latch onto.

And because he's lucky, by the time he's finished with his first cup of tea, a timely distraction presents itself in the form of Teresa Lisbon, who marches across the office into the kitchenette with a white paper box in her hand.

She's in earlier than usual, though there's no pending case matter that requires this early a start. A sleepless night, he speculates. She seems lucid and alert, not necessarily tired, but still the edge in her steps hints at a low-grade grumpiness that often indicates a severe lack of sleep. Caused by either her shoulder—she's recovered most of its strength, but the gunshot wound may still be stiff and sore—or one of many dark and haunting thoughts on recent events that she tries to repress with all of her not inconsiderable self-control and mostly succeeds.

Mostly, but not completely. Because some of it still leaks into her features, as if from a cracked pot.

There's a sudden, sharp clench somewhere in his chest. Jane tightens his finger around the handle of his favorite blue teacup and gets to his feet.

In the kitchenette, she's pouring herself a cup of coffee. After a careful sip, she makes a face, because the coffee's is only lukewarm. Her mood doesn't improve much when she looks up and sees him, either. His presence only serves as a reminder of the thoughts that have been keeping her at night, and likely she's hoped to be left alone for a moment so that she could indulge in her grumpiness in peace, for a moment she could use to compose herself. Had he been a good man, or a decent man, he would let her.

He is neither, and he never lets her win, not even in something as small as this. He wants her smile, he decides. He wants her smile, he wants her scowl, and he's going to get both.

She dips a spoon into the cup and nudges the fridge open with her foot. She's going to add honey and milk to the coffee, he predicts, an indulgence that she's hoping would help her dispel her dark mood. And she does exactly that: she takes a milk carton out from the fridge and turns away from the cup for a second to reach for a jar of honey from the cabinet before turning around again.

And freezes.

_Five, four, three, two—_

One side of her bottom lip curls up, just the tiniest bit.

—_and one._

"Jane," she warns him in a low voice that doesn't completely hide disbelieving amusement. "Give it back."

He fakes a yawn and blinks at her. "Good morning to you, too, Lisbon."

She rolls her eyes and sticks out her hand. "My spoon, Jane."

"Oh, well, if you insist." Jane produces the spoon from his wrinkled jacket sleeve with exaggerated care, flashing a bright smile that he's been reliably told could charm a snake. Patrick Jane, the great and amazing serpent charmer. But just as she reaches for the spoon, he takes a step back. "Ah-ah-ah, but _only if _you say it after me: _good morning, Jane_."

Lisbon couldn't be any further from a serpent, symbolic or otherwise—and he isn't about to describe her as Eve just so that the metaphor could somehow be made to stick—so she only scowls and snatches the spoon from his hand. "Uh-huh, I don't think so."

Lisbon dips the spoon back into her coffee and stirs it with feeling, and Jane's smile, in true inverse proportion, grows brighter as her scowl darkens. Her nose always crinkles when she scowls, and he enjoys that little fact, perhaps a bit too much.

He leans around her to peek at the white box she's left on the counter. He can recognize the logo on the box as the one from the pastry shop across their office building. "What you got hiding in there, Lisbon?"

"Oh no, you don't." She pulls the box away from his reach. "Not after that cute little stunt."

He places a palm on his chest, miming a wound. "You're denying me a bear claw for giving you back your spoon?"

"Nope," she counters, "for being juvenile and childish enough to steal it in the first place."

"You just used two words that mean the same thing," he points out_—_quite reasonably, he thinks. "And you can't deny me what's rightfully mine. One of those bear claws has my name written all over it."

"Yes, I can, Jane, and no, it doesn't." To drive the point across, she takes one of them out of the box and chomps on it loudly.

_"Oh no, you don't_," says Jane, echoing her words exactly, and proceeds to lunge after the prize in her hand. Lisbon, surefooted, steps out of the way, but Jane can be fast when he wants to be, so he's only moments away from successfully lodging it from her grip when Cho arrives in brisk, efficient steps.

"A woman's body was found downtown, reported half an hour ago," he informs Lisbon, not batting a single eyelash at the sight of his boss and Jane in the middle of a tug-of-war over a piece of breakfast pastry. "They want us there right away, boss."

Lisbon doesn't miss a beat. "Call Rigsby and Van Pelt and tell them to meet us there. Let's go."

Jane releases his fingers on her bear claw only when she turns to give him a pointed look, and even then he does it with a great show of reluctance. She rolls her eyes again, and picks up the box to drop it into Jane's hands.

"Don't forget to share it with the rest of the class," she says, and turns to leave with Cho, not once doubting that Jane would follow.

And he does, of course. He has everything he's wanted this morning: a smile, a scowl and a box of bear claws in his hands. This outcome is not surprising—it's predictable, even. Because, one way or another, Lisbon lets him get away with anything. Including murder.

It's not her fault. He's used her sympathy, loyalty and maybe even affection, to insinuate himself into her life, into _their _lives, gradually and so thoroughly over the years that they're now inexplicably tied to him—so that they could only reward him with their unshakeable and steadfast allegiance that they all know he doesn't deserve.

But watching Lisbon walk away while listening to Cho's a short and succinct summary of how the body was discovered, Jane feels a small smile on his face, unplanned and unfeigned, where there has been none before.

Now, their smiles and scowls also dictate his.

_I have spread my dreams beneath your feet_, he remembers. _Tread softly, because you tread on my dreams_.

He can no longer tell where manipulation ends and affection starts.

If this were a con, it would be a failure of the highest grade.

* * *

><p>"<em>Ow<em>."

Lisbon turns around just in time to see Jane go down with an _oooph_. Watching a flailing Jane will never not be funny, but it's not quite as amusing when it's because he's been tackled and decked by some frantic kid scrambling to run away. She and Cho are on them in an instant, and they pry the kid off Jane.

"You okay?" she asks Jane, who's gotten to his feet. For no reason whatsoever, there's a sudden flashback to a wet, shivery night of her nightmare—_I need help now, please!_—that she has to ruthlessly push away. "Jane?" she asks again, just to appease herself, "are you hurt?"

"Nah," Jane says, expertly flippant, and dusts off his jacket. "But—thank you, Lisbon. Excellent save as always."

Cho pats down the struggling kid and fishes out a wallet from the kid's jacket. "Andy Clayton, fourteen years old," he says, examining the content of the wallet. "What were you doing in the alley?" he asks the kid.

"Let go," says the kid, squirming to get out of Cho's grip. He's lanky and scrawny and stubborn in the way that reminds Lisbon of Tommy at fourteen with all his temper tantrums—which, honestly, is never a good sign. "Seriously, man_, let go of me_. You can't do this—I didn't do anything!"

"Then why did you run?" Cho asks, impassive.

Jane raises a finger, with his patented _oh, oh, I know this one _look already fully, and annoyingly, in place_._ "Because Andy here noticed you and Lisbon's decidedly cop-like gaits and assumed, incorrectly, that we're here to bust him for a pack of fine weeds that he has hidden, in—"

He pauses, staring at the kid.

The kid—Andy Clayton—stares back, holding his breath.

And Jane grins. "In his left shoe, of course. Look at the inner lining of his left shoe, Cho."

The kid gapes at him. "How did you—?"

"Yeah," says Cho, "he does that."

Five seconds later there's a small plastic bag full of marijuana dangling between Cho's fingers. The kid's head falls. "But you really weren't here to bust me?" the kid asks.

"Ah, no," Jane says, and his grin turns downright cherubic as he shoves his hands into his jacket pockets and rocks on his heels, "indeed we weren't. But then again, now that we _are _made aware of your dangerous proclivities, we are of course bound by law to perform our sworn duties. To protect and serve, to keep the streets clean from unsavory activities such as this, to ascertain your punishment befitting the crime."

The kid looks progressively deflated with each word that comes out of Jane's mouth, and Lisbon summons the patience of a saint not to roll her eyes at both of them. While it's not as hard as it should be—even if she hadn't mastered the way during her prolonged exposure to one Patrick Jane, she's had more than plenty of experience from wresting with her kid brothers—it isn't exactly _easy_. "A body was found a couple of blocks down from here, early this morning," she tells the kid, who's still twitching nervously. "Did you see anything?"

"A body? Wow, you mean someone died here? And that's why so many cops are around?" the kid asks, eyes wide, and then balks immediately. "Um, no, didn't see anything. Not really. I mean, wasn't hanging out here last night."

"Then what were you doing here just now?" Cho repeats his question.

The kid fidgets with his feet.

"Andy, look at me," she says, her voice firm, and he lifts his head reluctantly. "What were you doing in the alley this morning?"

He stares at his feet some more before he says, "I was thinkin' of scoring some customers, is all. Sometimes the other guys don't get here 'til late, so, you know, sometimes I come by early to see if anyone wants to get, uh, hooked up."

Cho shares a look with Lisbon. "Dealers' corner," he concludes.

"Looks like it," she agrees, feeling a half sigh making its way out of her. She suppresses it quickly and nods at Cho.

At her signal, Cho walks the kid over to the local police in the perimeter. The kid looks utterly crestfallen, and her heart, almost involuntarily, goes out to him. _Too young_, she thinks. Too young for this kind of life, though she knows one could never be the right age for a life on the street.

"Is it just me," Jane asks her, cracking his neck, "or are they getting younger every time?"

There are times when she thinks, unwittingly, that Jane may really be able to pluck people's thoughts from thin air. "It's not just you," she assures him.

When she arrives at the crime scene with Jane in tow, Rigsby and Van Pelt are already there, studying a body slumped against the concrete wall next to a warehouse building. Both of them look up at their arrival.

"A woman in late 20s, possibly early 30s," Rigsby reports immediately. "The cops say she was found about five this morning, though the local ME on sight put a tentative time of death to late last night, between midnight to one in the morning."

She was killed here, Lisbon decides, studying the blood spatters on the ground and on the wall. One casing from the shot—a single and fatal shot—was found, almost at a point-blank range, but nothing else. The strap of the victim's purse, still loosely around her shoulder, is torn, some of the purse's contents obviously missing. Possibly a robbery gone wrong, she thinks, and wonders what the victim had been doing in a remote area, a known dealers' corner. She was clean and well-dressed, and she doesn't look like she could've been using. And the way she's laid out, with her hands folded together in front of her—

That stops Lisbon. "Has anyone touched the body?"

"No, ma'am," answers one of the patrol officers standing at the side. "We made sure that it would be left exactly as it was found."

Jane hums at that. More than likely he's already noticed that the victim's body appears to be arranged like she's peacefully asleep, stark contrast to the violence committed to her. Unless the person who discovered the body arranged it this way—unlikely, because people generally have a healthy aversion toward dead bodies—it could've been done by the perp.

"She's dressed like she could've been out on a date," says Van Pelt. "Or coming from one. Husband? Boyfriend?"

"No wedding ring," Rigsby points out. And he's right, Lisbon notes. There's no ring, or any trace of a ring ever been on her ring finger.

"Boyfriend," Van Pelt amends.

"Someone she loved," Jane says, locking his jaws. "Sensibly dressed, clean and mid-range affordability. Likely a paralegal or maybe a secretary. Wearing an expensive but tasteful perfume, probably a gift, not something she uses often. And her shoes." He points at a pair of high heels that are pointy enough to be conceivably used as an assault weapon. "Probably not affordable for her salary, either, but she wanted to look her best in small ways. She was in love, with someone who knew her well."

Lisbon stares at the body, no longer surprised at the narrative of the victim's life that Jane can glean from the merest of glances. Just the night before, the victim was young and beautiful and happy and likely in love. And now—

"Poor thing," says Van Pelt, giving voice to what Lisbon, too, is feeling.

Lisbon turns around to face her team and clears her throat. "All right, how did she get here? Did she park her car around here, or someone dropped her off? Did she walk? Canvass the area and check with the cab companies. Check if there's any CCTV nearby. Let's find out who she was and what she was doing here."

She recites the routine procedural steps—almost unnecessarily, because it doesn't abate the helplessness she feels completely, but it is at least a start, and all members of her team, ever reliable, spread out to carry out the work that needs to be done.

"Boss." Van Pelt comes up to Lisbon, just as she turns around to examine the body again. Her voice is low, almost a murmur at Lisbon's ear. "I looked through the files from 2004 to 2006, but nothing stood out so far."

Lisbon thinks back to the double-locked cabinet in her office, and its content that many criminal profilers across the country are drooling after. Whether or not Timothy Carter was really Red John, whether or not Red John's followers are still out there carrying out murders in his name, it's technically no longer their case, not anymore, and it's _definitely_ not something she should be working on with Van Pelt in their spare time. But there's Jane.

There's always Jane.

"Okay, let's cross-reference Timothy Carter's past activities since 2007 with anything that we know to be attributed to Red John," she says, just as quietly. "Try not to log into the system, and use only paper copies in my office. We can get Cho to help, if needed." No Rigsby, for now, because as much as she trusts him and counts on him, he's also a terrible open book.

Van Pelt accepts Lisbon's direction, once again, with surprising ease. "And Jane?"

Lisbon doesn't make a mistake of turning to look at Jane, who currently seems occupied with the placement of the graffiti on the wall behind the dumpster at the end of the alley. "Not yet," she says, even though it may as well be futile. Jane will find out eventually, because he's Jane, but she needs time to put things together, and nothing good would come out of him knowing this right away.

Van Pelt nods in acknowledgement, not betraying even slight panic at the idea, and Lisbon, after a second of hesitation, starts, "Grace, I don't have to remind you how dangerous this could be. There's no reason for you to be involved, not if you don't want to be."

No doubt they're already under Red John's—or his seemingly omnipresent and omnipotent followers'—radar, but if it's found out they're carrying out an independent investigation, that just might push them up to the top, maybe even break this unstable status quo.

But Van Pelt only gives her a sharp, bright smile that's only barely tempered by brittle edges. "Oh, I understand perfectly. I _want_ to be involved, boss."

It's gotten personal for Grace, too, after O'Laughlin, and if Lisbon lets herself, it would be too easy to fall into despair over the state of things. Grace is holding herself together admirably well—too well. One of these days, she will break, because they all have a breaking point, and Grace's limit seems to be perilously close. Lisbon's job is to hold them together. Her job has always been to hold them together. But she's failing that, as of late.

And that's never made more obvious than when she looks up at Jane and his golden-boy smile, both perfectly smooth and carefully varnished on the surface.

There's normalcy to all of this, even complacency. Another mystery solved, a case closed, and then, like clockwork, another starts. They're living from one moment to another, all of their lives still on a holding pattern, as if—

As if Red John might not still be out there. As if she hasn't taken away a chance that Jane could have lived, even for a short while, without remembering the shadows of Red John looming at every corner of his life. As if Jane hasn't shot and killed someone—not in self-defense, not to protect another life, but a pre-meditated murder of someone Jane believed to be Red John, precisely the very event she swore that she would stop.

And yet, nothing's changed, the least of all her. She doesn't despise Jane. She doesn't want to see him incarcerated. She doesn't wish he hasn't done it. She can rationalize it easily, simply, with statements like: _if Jane hasn't stopped Timothy Carter, an innocent girl would've been murdered, and God knows how many more_.

And she can't even begin to describe how wrong all of this is.

They're officers of the law. It's their job to right the wrong, to discern black from white, even if they operate primarily in the world of grey. She wonders whether she's losing the sight of it, just because it would be—expedient. Because it would be easier, for all of them, and for her, not to deal with Jane and all the moral complexities that he brings with him.

You don't change Jane, she knows. Jane changes you.

And it's only an excuse.

"Feel like grabbing another cup of tea on the way back?" Jane asks, tearing his eyes away from the wall for the moment, at her approach.

Jane is studying her, seemingly casually but with the same focus he's given the graffiti before them, because that's what he always does. Jane, who can pluck people's thoughts from thin air, who undoubtedly knows what's keeping her up at night. Jane, who's changed her.

"Lisbon?" he prompts, quite gently for him.

"Okay, let's do that," she says, finally—and lightly, which takes some effort on her part. "But you're buying."

"But of course," he says, sounding like every other time when he's promised to pay but dodges the counter at the first available opportunity, not because he can't afford to, but because he knows he could get away with it.

She allows him a small smile, because she knows it's what he wants to see. And because it's her job to hold her people together, even if she doesn't know how many times a man can be broken and put together again before he can no longer retain its original shape.

But then she remembers, just in time: she's never met Patrick Jane who wasn't yet broken.

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><p><strong>TBC<strong>


	2. Chapter 2

_They're his friends, as close to a family he'll ever allow anyone to become, and he loves them all. And one day, he will be the death of them._

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><p><em>By the waters of Leman I sat down and wept,<em> Jane reads.

He's moved on from Yates to Eliot. It's still not much of an improvement, so it's not a big loss to lift his eyes from the book to watch Rigsby, who lays out the content of the box he's carried in with him—a wallet carefully wrapped in a plastic evidence bag, and a handful of other items—onto Van Pelt's desk.

"Found them in a dumpster a block away," Rigsby explains. "No usable fingerprints, no cash, no credit cards, but her driver's license was left inside." Lisbon and Cho gather around the desk, and Rigsby says, "Our victim's name is Eurydice Jackson. Thirty-two. Sacramento address."

"Eurydice," Jane tests out the name, rolling it on his tongue, and sits up on the couch again. "Hmm, interesting name. Rather poetic, even."

"Orpheus and Eurydice," Cho the avid reader says offhandedly, while carefully studying the new-found evidence.

"I remember the story," says Van Pelt. "Greek myth, right? Orpheus tried to bring her back from the dead, only he couldn't stop himself from turning back to look at her, so she had to return to the Underworld. So sad."

"Ah, but that's the way it is, isn't it? You can't challenge gods and their wills by bringing back the dead, not even in mythology." _And not in reality, either_, Jane doesn't add. "Not once you cross River Styx, anyhow. After all_, you can't get there from here_," he says the last part, somewhat dramatically, in his best New England accent.

"Jane," Lisbon says his names like she can't quite decide whether she wants to be severely or just marginally annoyed. "Bert & I? Really?"

"Well, it is a cliché for a reason, but the sentiment still applies. You can't change things that you can't control, so you're better off letting them go. You should try it sometimes, Lisbon—it's very Zen," he says cheerily, just to raise hackles out of her. "Let go of things you can't control. Live and let live."

"Uh-huh," she mutters under her breath, "you're one to talk."

"Hey, I heard that."

Lisbon ignores him and his grin altogether in favor of turning to the team. "All right, let's see then if we can find out whether there's ever been Orpheus at some point for our Eurydice, shall we?"

They discuss the next course of action, dividing the various tasks from informing the relatives to sitting in on the autopsy. Van Pelt gets the background check, Cho lands interviewing the witnesses, while the autopsy result, by default, falls to Rigsby, who noticeably cringes.

"You wanna swap?" Rigsby asks Cho later. Rigsby is a bear of a man who possesses the kind of rock-solid decency that's near extinct in this world. He's also as eager as a friendly lab. "The County ME doesn't like me, not after that last debacle with frozen bodies I asked them to look at."

Jane cranes his neck to watch the scene unfold with some interest, internally betting that there's no way Cho will trade the task.

And, of course: "No," says Cho.

"But I did the dumpster-diving this time!"

"Because you lost three rounds of rock, paper, scissors. Straight."

"But—"

"No," repeats Cho, who is masking his amusement rather impressively behind a show of reticence, in Jane's professional opinion.

Rigsby grumbles into his coffee cup, but it lasts only until Van Pelt walks back into the bullpen and hands them the printouts on Eurydice Jackson. "Hey, why don't I go sit in with you at the autopsy," she suggests to Rigsby, "then we can go talk to her coworkers together?"

Rigsby looks up and smiles at her, tentative but heartfelt. Grace smiles back.

There's a rare pleasure in moments like this that Jane collects almost faithfully. If he has ever been a religious man, which he clearly isn't, he would call it miraculous, maybe even magical, this unadulterated happiness one feels in a single ephemeral moment that they know perfectly well will not last—all moments such as this will eventually be marred by too much hurt from the past and impermanence of reality.

But Rigsby, even after everything, sees joy in a glint of light off the fiery red hair, and she sees the same reflected on his broad, kind face, and Jane feels fragments of languid and pervasive happiness that he wants to collect and assemble into a shape that he can hold onto so it will never be broken.

_You don't _not _like us, _Cho said once.

But that's not even close to being right, because Jane loves them all. Jane can't delude himself into thinking that he's incapable of such feelings anymore, though he'd dearly like to deceive himself if he could. It would be convenient, _easy_, to believe that he's only in this because they're still useful to him in his quest for vengeance, that he's only using them as anchors to ground himself. But the fact is indisputable. They're his friends, as close to a family he'll ever allow anyone to become, and he loves them all.

And one day, he will be the death of them.

"No family," says Lisbon, reading from the printout in her hand. "No surviving parents, either, except for a sister, who lives in the same address. Okay, Jane, let's go talk to the sister."

There's no denying it: the only people left in the world that Jane cares enough not to lose are all in this room, and if this continues on, he will be the death of them. After everything, he's still sitting in the CBI office, enjoying their presences in his life, his tenuous connections to the world. And Red John would gleefully like to see them severed. Not yet, but eventually. It's a simple matter of logic: Red John would want delayed, and therefore increased, gratification. He wants Jane primed up high on the ledge, wants to watch while Jane dithers and falters, before he eventually, finally, plunges into that catastrophic fall.

And more than likely, the each nudge toward the cliff would be losing his friends, probably one by one, in the most grandiose fashion that Red John can manage to shape.

But then again, Jane has never believed it would ever turn out otherwise.

"Jane, you coming?" asks a voice.

He doesn't get up from the couch. He doesn't cross the space between him and his friends, the last few steps that may close the distance he's always maintained. He doesn't try to. He can't.

"Jane." It's Lisbon, who is now standing in front of him, as if to prove that if the mountain will not come to Mohammed, Mohammed must go to the mountain. There's a faint trace of alarm in her voice, in her face. "You still with us?"

Jane blinks up at her. "What?"

"You're smiling." Which, of course, is a cause enough for concern, for Lisbon. "What's so funny?"

"Oh, nothing," he answers, though he knows the smile is still there on his face, lingering behind like the taste of a bitter pill. It's a private joke that isn't meant to be shared. "Nothing at all."

_You can't get there from here_.

He would laugh, if he could.

* * *

><p>Penelope Jackson, like her sister, has a long dark hair and a serious face, which is now tear-stained.<p>

"I think she was seeing someone," she tells them, crumpled on the chair in the living room that she used to share with her sister. Lisbon has sat across from grieving relatives far more times than she'd care to in her lifetime, and she easily recognizes the exhaustion from grief when she sees one.

"But she never told me who it was, which was so unlike her. And I could tell it was a serious thing. And how happy she was."

Jane leans forward on the couch. "Your sister told you everything, but this time she didn't, and you thought it was because—?"

Penelope hesitates, biting down her lip.

"I'm a soul of discretion," Jane offers, "and it's safe to say I've never met anyone more trustworthy than our Lisbon here."

Jane's laying it down pretty thick, but Lisbon can tell it's working from the way Penelope loosens the tight grip she has on her chair handle. Lisbon, too, reaches out and puts her hand on the woman's frail shoulder. "It could help us figure out who might be behind her murder," Lisbon reminds her gently. "Did you think she was seeing someone who was no good, or—"

"Or married?" Jane asks, quietly.

Penelope winces and stares at the frayed edges of her cardigan. "Yes, I thought he might be. But she isn't—she wasn't that kind of person."

"No one really is," says Jane, perfectly sympathetic, and Penelope tears up again.

Even on a good day Jane is supremely difficult to read, though by now Lisbon knows all the standard warning signs Jane brings with him: a smirk, a tiny contemplative tug at his lips, or a perfectly polite smile that suddenly sharpens at the corners. She's long ago learned to recognize them so that she would know when to reach for her handcuffs—or her gun. But Jane, still quiet and grim, only produces a white handkerchief with a tiny little flourish and hands it over to Penelope. Probably not a suspect, then. Lisbon draws a little checkmark next to Penelope Jackson's name on her mental notebook.

With Penelope Jackson's permission, Lisbon and Jane enter Eurydice's room. It's a clean, well-kept room, not large enough to convey desolation yet, but loneliness still seems pervasive in the way that a room without its owner can be. There are a few famous paintings—"Not real, of course," Jane concludes dismissively—hanging on the wall, as well as a few photographs of landscapes, likely something the victim took herself. There's a shelf full of books on various topics, and a couple of drawers stand against one side of the room, along with a desk. There're more photos on the desk, though no pictures of a suspected significant other, as far as she could tell. Some bills. No journals, not that Lisbon expected one. A laptop that they may have to take with them to the forensics. No cell phone anywhere in the room, though they couldn't find one in the dumpster, either. She studies as much as she can, categorically and methodically.

On the other side of the room, Jane is doing the same, but in his own way. She knows she's a good cop and a decent investigator, with good instincts as well as confidence to make good use of them. But Jane—he's something else altogether. He looks almost abstract, while absorbing the details of the room, like he's living in another plane of existence where insights and inspirations are as easy to pick up as apples in an orchard on a warm fall afternoon. She loathes to drag him down to this world, where things may be too slow and plain for him but are manageable to her, so for a moment, she only watches him out of the corner of her eye.

He hasn't been sleeping well. That much, even she can tell.

Jane, studying a Monet on the wall, says without turning around, "Nope."

Of course he's noticed her watching him—when _doesn't_ he? "No what?" she asks warily.

"You were asking yourself whether I slept at all last night. The answer is no. You should be able to tell by now."

He sounds almost chiding, and just in time she manages to suppress a sigh that's about to escape. It's becoming a bad habit. "You can't keep on doing this to yourself. You actually _need_ to sleep at some point."

"Meh," he says, oh so maturely, and picks up one of the books from the bedside table. "Sleep is overrated."

"No, Jane, it's not," she says, in a firm tone she knows isn't going to work on him, but maybe the umpteenth time is charm, or so she hopes futilely.

"No?" he asks, completely guileless. "How about, I can sleep when I'm dead?"

"It's not funny."

"It's a _little _funny."

At her glare, he puts his hands up in mock surrender, looking a tiny bit chastised. It couldn't have escaped his notice what's so freshly hurting in their minds—in _her _mind. As a peace offering, he hands her the book he's picked up from the victim's bedside table.

"_Sonnet to Orpheus_," she reads the cover. "Rilke."

He nods at the book. "Read the inscription."

She flips the cover open. At one corner of the title page, it simply says,_ From J. _She raises an eyebrow. "So there really _is_ an Orpheus?"

"Nah, no one sets out to go to hell and play some soulful music to Hades to beg the return of his lover these days, you know. There must've been a boyfriend, though, likely a married, cheating bastard." He shrugs, and then when he turns to her, his eyes abruptly take on a mischievous gleam. _Uh-oh,_ thinks Lisbon. "Ah, but don't you worry, Lisbon. Chivalry isn't, as a matter of fact, entirely dead. _I _would go to hell and back, just for you."

"Right." Lisbon snorts in a rather un-lady-like fashion. It's a good thing that she's never particularly considered herself one. "_You _are going to save _me_."

Jane is suddenly—right, _suddenly_—all pompousness. "Well, even you have to admit that between the two of us, _I_ am the one with musical talent."

"Oh, please. Orpheus? You're more like a satyr. One of those things with flutes. Or Pan, at best."

"Ah, God of mischief," says Jane, tilting his head and giving it some consideration. "Suppose that's somewhat fitting."

Then he proceeds to give her a smile befitting a contemporary version of Pan, the kind that makes her recall, uneasily and unnecessarily, of _Paddy_. And how he looked that night, standing at the door.

What would he have done, if it could've ended with Timothy Carter? If it had really been the end? Could he have ever let that go?

There was one point in time when she was convinced Timothy Carter was Red John, but now she isn't sure whether she'd just wanted to put an end to all of this, to this terrible tragedy of Jane, that she's reached the point where need and desire and desperation end and delusion starts instead.

_I'm happy now. Just let me be happy._

"You don't have to look back," she says, offering her words like a consolation prize that she knows will never be good enough, because she doesn't have anything else she could offer. "I will always be right behind."

For one long moment, his eyes that meet hers are quiet, unsettlingly so. "Wrong analogy, Lisbon."

_In what way?_ She almost asks. Almost, because she knows better.

And he smiles at her, that sudden and bright and devastating smile of his that never, ever reaches his eyes. "How about ice cream on the way back? Strawberry and pistachio."

"What, so you won't not-pay for it?" she asks lightly, matching his tone exactly, and once again it takes some effort on her part. "Just like you haven't not-paid for the tea this morning?"

"But of course."

Without waiting for her answer, Jane begins to name all thirty-seven gelato flavors from his favorite downtown store that sells the best desserts, giddy like a child, and hums past her toward the door. She takes one sweeping look at the room before she follows after him, in keeping with her promise. It's something he hasn't asked for, one that he probably doesn't even want. But it's her to make, and she will do everything to keep her promise, even if—

Even if these days, when she imagines red sprinkles on vanilla ice cream, or when she passes by a pair of pink hearts carved in oak trees, or even when she catches a faint lipstick mark on a collar of a white, starched shirt, she can only think of an apple-red smile staining a red-brick wall.

* * *

><p><strong>TBC<strong>


	3. Chapter 3

_Because he knows, one way or another, he will become the rock under her foot that would cause her fall._

* * *

><p><em>It may be that the gulfs will wash us down—<em>

Jane doesn't have much taste for Rilke, so he reads a little on Penelope and dabbles a little more on her counterpart, Odysseus, while occasionally observing the progress Rigsby is making. Rigsby is painstakingly going through the evidence box, cataloguing and itemizing each entry. The photos from the crime scenes are spread out on the conference table, all of the pictures dark and grey except for the splashes of colors afforded by Eurydice Jackson's dress and the bright swirls of gratiffi on the wall her body was slumping against.

_It may be that the gulfs will wash us down_

_It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles_

_Though much is taken, much abides—_

Jane pauses before reading any further. The sentiment buried among the words seems so patently untrue—there may be a reason why Red John isn't as enamored with Tennyson as he seems to be with Blake—so he puts the book aside and picks up the crime scene photos from the desk. They're mostly distractions, so he studies them randomly with casual irreverence, waiting for something to tug at him.

And something does. "Rigsby, what do these"—Jane gestures at the middle of one photograph, at the black and red strokes swirling against the grey of the concrete wall—"look like to you?"

Rigsby pauses in the middle of his thankless task and studies the photo with Jane. "Gang signs," he says, easily enough, but then frowns. "Nothing I've seen before. But that pattern of in the middle, that squiggly thing surrounded by a circle? That usually means a claim."

"A claim?"

"Yep, the area was traditionally under another gang, but a new group is staking a claim. Probably we're going to see some changes around there, which isn't exactly a good thing." At Jane's look, Rigsby elaborates, "The transition like that usually gets _extremely_ bloody."

"But Eurydice Jackson wasn't a victim of, what do you call it, a 'transition'?"

"Oh, no, definitely not their style. Even if the vic was somehow caught during a firefight as a bystander, we would've seen, well, a lot more bullet holes in her body." Rigsby, a big softie that he is, is almost cringing even as he answers.

"Huh." Jane considers the photo again and feels for the particular pull of instinct again, something that may unravel all the mystery with a single tug, but even after carefully observing the curves and the turns of the graffiti, nothing else comes to him. Which means there isn't much he can do until there's more information.

So he gives it up altogether and slowly wanders off, cradling a cup of tea in his hand and weighing his options. Cho's out scouting the crime scene area once again for witnesses. Lisbon, along with Van Pelt, has been holed up in her office for the last couple of hours, ostentatiously going over the paperwork for a case pending at the court. Even through the glass wall of Lisbon's office, Jane can easily read aggravation written on the arc of Lisbon's right eyebrow, on the thin line of her mouth, and it's difficult not to be overwhelmed by a sudden, helpless swell of affection.

Of course, he can always help Rigsby with going through the evidence instead of planning to irritate Lisbon in every possible way imaginable.

He could. Theoretically.

"Need any help?" he asks sunnily, opening the door to Lisbon's office and poking his head in. He feels rather cheerful even though he's volunteering his service for something he usually considers utterly, stupendously boring and more than a little waste of his time.

Van Pelt glances up at Jane, but Lisbon doesn't even look up. "No, Jane," says Lisbon, flipping through one of the many files currently decorating her desk and exuding gritted-teethed calm. "Under no circumstances are you to come within the ten feet of the case files."

"Oh, _really_?" Jane's perfectly aware how the saying goes—curiosity and cats never do go well together—but that old adage never stopped him before, and it isn't about to stop him now. "And why not?"

Van Pelt looks between her boss and Jane once and offers, "The DA office says they are no longer footing the bills for the therapies."

"The therapies?"

"The therapies," Lisbon echoes, her teeth still gritted, "that the ADAs regularly request in order to recover from _the holy terror that is you_."

Jane feels his grin turns wide and does not feel an iota of repentance, even when Lisbon looks up to level a quelling glare at him. "_Oooooooh_," he says, but before he can figure out a way to exploit the situation in some more fruitful and _fun_ ways, Cho brushes past Jane into her office.

"We got a hit," Cho reports to Lisbon. "A clerk from a motel about seven blocks away from where the body was found recognized the vic's photo. She booked a room a night before. Used cash."

"What was she doing in a motel?" Van Pelt asks, a frown edging into her voice.

"To the best of the clerk's recollection, the vic came in alone and left by herself, but he isn't exactly certain when. He's says their security camera for the reception area was down for the last couple of weeks. If someone else followed her in and stayed with her, we can't check from the videos."

"Of course not," Lisbon says. She sounds only half resigned. "Because why would anything be that easy? Okay, what about the weapon? Do we have the ballistics results yet?"

"Ballistics yes, gun no," answers Cho. "If the perp hid it near the crime scene, we haven't found it. The casing doesn't seem to be a match with any we have on record, either."

The frown on Lisbon's face grows deeper, the arc of her eyebrow hinting at even more aggravation than before. "What did her co-workers have to say?"

"Some of them were out, so we haven't been able to cover everyone yet," Cho admits, his usual stoic tone taking on a tone of apology. "The general consensus is that she was diligent and meticulous—"

"Uh, boss?" Rigsby calls out from the doorway. They all turn to him, and Rigsby crosses the space between them in a couple of giant steps and hands Lisbon a printout. "One of Eurydice Jackson's credit cards was just pinged. Someone tried to use it in store, and the shopkeeper caught him basically red-handed. The Sacramento police is holding him right now. They just sent over the rap sheet, a kid named—"

"Andy Clayton," Lisbon reads from the printout, and her shoulders seem to sag, just a little. She's remembering the kid they met in the alley near the crime scene from the other morning—so is Jane, but Lisbon's always had a soft spot for lost causes. _Saint Teresa of Lost Causes_, Jane might just name her. The nickname is, all in all, pretty apt.

Lisbon silently squares her shoulders again. "Okay, Jane and I will take him. Cho, Rigsby, talk to the rest of the coworkers. Van Pelt, see if you can wrap up these files."

With respective tasks assigned, everyone disperses immediately. Lisbon is quickly on her feet, and Jane leisurely follows her out of the office. He gives her minimal grief over giving up the driver seat, and, as they drive through drizzling rain, he watches her out of corner of his eyes. She's quiet, except when she drums her fingers on the wheel, making soft, rhythmic tapping noises that are almost in sync with the raindrops pattering against the windshield. She's been tired and distracted, as of late. There are already enough reasons why she might be, though, without having to invent any hidden reasons as to why she must be.

_Perhaps too many_, Jane admits, _most of them provided by yours truly_.

Still, there's no reason to take on all the blame when there's already plenty to go around.

Andy Clayton, another of possible lost causes, may have to shoulder some of the blame. When the kid's ushered into the interrogation room of the Sacramento police station, he's wearing exactly the same guilty look on his face that he had two days ago. Lisbon schools her expression, but she still wears her heart on her sleeves for everyone to see, and not just for Jane who knows all of her expressions like a back of his own hand.

"I didn't do _anything_," Andy protests the second he sees Jane and Lisbon sitting at the table. "I just picked up her wallet, that's it! It's not a crime!"

"But using what's inside when it clearly isn't yours _is_," Jane says cheerfully. "Too bad for you, huh?"

Andy moodily kicks some invisible dirt on the floor.

Ah, all this misshapen youth, Jane thinks grandly. "But," continues Jane, "let's not concern with pesky little details, shall we? As long as you give us what we really want to know, we may just as well let this little thing go, for once."

That piques some interest, because the kid looks up and stares at Jane and Lisbon across the table with a begrudging hope.

"Andy," Lisbon leans forward and starts in her kindest voice possible, "where did you find the wallet?"

"I didn't!" the kid says quickly. "I mean, I didn't see nothin'!"

"No one's saying you did," says Lisbon, mustering the level of patience she often has to dredge up for Jane. Knowing Jane has to have been one long—and not exactly _un_helpful—character-building exercise for her, if nothing else, so for that, Jane feels he's entitled to some credit. Not that, of course, he'll make that observation to her face. Well, not too often, at any rate.

"But you did, though," Jane points out, still quite cheery. "Obviously."

"—but it may help us find who the killer is," Lisbon presses on, casually bulldozing over Jane's words, "if you can tell us whatever you may or may not have seen. Someone killed this poor woman, and you may be able to help us catch her killer. Wouldn't you like that? To give her and her family some peace?"

The kid hunches his shoulders so tightly that he seems to crawl into himself. He's silent for a long time until he says, "I didn't, I mean I, I wasn't s'posed to be there, okay? Ricky's taken over that spot, and I couldn't exactly hang there all the time, but I knew Ricky was off somewhere that night, so I made rounds, and then—" Andy stops, shuddering visibly. "'m sorry, okay? Never saw a dead body before, and she was just—there. Dead. And I wasn't thinking about anything, okay? I really wasn't. It's just, her bag was just right there, and it was open, so I just. I mean, I didn't really think—I'm _sorry_."

The kid's head hangs between his shoulders.

It's been some time since Jane has seen anyone telegraphing guilt so loudly and clearly, and he can literally feel Lisbon's heart going out for the boy. The kid has a couple of records for petty theft, and drug-dealing has been only recently added to the list, but all in all, they've seen worse. Much worse. And after the initial snag, Andy tells them everything. No, he didn't see anyone else. It was probably between one and two in the morning when he found the body. And no, he didn't take anything else, and he's pretty sure he didn't see any gun anywhere.

When they take him out of the interrogation room, a frail woman, who can only be Andy's mother, is waiting for them. "How much trouble is he in?" Mrs. Clayton asks, wringing her hands together.

"The credit card he used was stolen from a murder victim." At Lisbon's careful words, the woman's eyes go wide. "Do you happen to know anything that might help us?"

She shakes her head vehemently. "Andy, my son, he's good kid, with a good heart, you see," she says, repeatedly. "He's just fallen with a bad crowd, that's all. Bad friends. Otherwise, he's always been a good kid, you see?" It's an explanation that is entirely unhelpful, but Andy's mother holds onto it like it's a lifesaver, just as all mothers do.

Lisbon nods and offers a few comforting words. Once the paperwork's gone through and the police decides to release the kid, she catches Andy by the back of his collar and turns him around to face her. "Stay out of trouble and listen to your mother, okay?"

Andy stares at his toes again; Lisbon puts her hand under his chin and holds it there until he meets her eyes. "Got that, Andy?" she asks, gentler still.

Andy swallows once and nods, guilt and remorse still clear on his face, and Andy's mother thanks them profusely.

Jane watches, in silence.

Outside, the rain continues to fall. Jane stands with Lisbon at the entrance, momentarily sheltered by the edge of the roof.

"So, where do think this leaves us?" Lisbon asks Jane, though her eyes are on something else entirely—on the mother and the son, getting into a beat-up truck in the parking lot, with the mother's hand protectively hovering above the boy's shoulder.

Lisbon's hand, almost absently, drifts toward the crucifix around her neck.

He watches her watch them, thinks, once again, S_aint Teresa_ _of Lost Causes_. In more ways than one. At times, it amuses Jane to think of her as his personal, pint-sized and gun-totting angel, fierce in single-minded tenacity and ferocious in absolute relentlessness. He knows better than to say things like that out loud to her, of course. Sure, he likes to tempt fate—he's made a decent business out of it, in fact—but he's not _stupid_.

Still, just as she's done for her father, just as she will for Andy Clayton, she would also pray for Jane.

Secretly, maybe even perversely, Jane's glad for it. He has no fear of God, but sometimes, for her sake, he wants to believe it. If forgiveness can be granted through fervent prayers of others, if one can receive absolution without seeking it, he would like to have it come from Lisbon. Even if it's yet another thing he would owe her.

Yet another thing he would owe her, yet another entry on the ever-growing list that he could never repay.

_You don't have to look back. I will always be right behind._

Perhaps he's better off believing in karma.

"—and after that, we should check with Cho and Rigsby. Maybe they had better luck."

Lisbon's talking. She's _been _talking. "Sure," Jane says quickly, one beat too late.

And it doesn't go unnoticed. She gives him a sidelong glance as they head toward their car. "What?" she asks, suspiciously.

"_What_ what?"

His wide-eyed innocent look is, as expected, countered by her familiar exasperation. "You weren't even listening to me, were you?"

Sometimes he forgets that she can read him as well as anyone could. Close. Too close. "Oh, but when am I ever, Lisbon?"

That earns him her ire—as predicted and calculated—and he ducks away quickly from her sharp nudge. Except he dodges right when it should've been left, so he steps right into a puddle of rainwater.

The bottom of his trousers are instantly soaked; he jumps, sputtering in outrage, and she cracks up, right in his face, her laughter sudden and bright.

And for that singular, miraculous moment, there's the sudden, bright stab of happiness.

—and when he feels no smudge of the familiar darkness that perpetually taints his breathing every second, it breaks. This moment can only be a sleight of hand, a trick of light. He knows it better than anyone, a magician's trick, a trickster's magic, the joy that must degrade. That _must _be derailed, scudded again. Because—

The moment is made possible only because he has let Red John to kill his wife and daughter.

Its very existence is a betrayal. To them.

Just like that, the moment is gone. A bubble pop. A mirage.

_It may be that the gulfs will wash us down_—

He's exactly in the right frame of mind to let it happen, except Lisbon looks at him quizzically, eyebrow up and her hand at his elbow. "You okay?"

He straightens up, looking as scornful as he can be. It takes longer than he'd like. "Of course not, Lisbon. I'm soaking wet. This is horrifyingly and utterly _unacceptable_."

"Right," she says, halfway between annoyance and amusement. "God forbid you'd ever catch a cold. You'd be insufferable for _days_. Let's go."

She marches on, pulling him beside her like she's marshalling the troops, with that _off we go_ in her voice, in her every step. Even in frustration, even with every obstacle he throws at her, she perseveres. He can easily believe she will march straight on and never lose her way, even though there may be a day, not so far from now, she'd her lose herself and stumble.

Because he knows, one way or another, he will become the rock under her foot that would cause her fall.

It comes to him as almost a coward-like relief, then, that he won't be there to see her fall.

* * *

><p><strong>TBC<strong>


	4. Chapter 4

_The world tilts and sways again, spinning in whichever direction it wants to, and Patrick Jane remains still._

* * *

><p>Jane sneezes. Loudly.<p>

He's faking it, Lisbon's sure. It's a simple logic: if Jane were really sick, he wouldn't be lounging on her couch, turning and tossing every minute and then moaning and sniffling every three minutes to make sure the whole damned world—and Lisbon, in particular—knows he's sick. So, therefore, hence, she categorically, methodically, flat-out refuses to do give anything even _resembling _attention to a big baby that is Patrick Jane.

Jane sneezes again.

She shuts her eyes and pinches the bridge of her nose, a futile gesture to ward off an oncoming headache. If something as non-event as Jane appropriating her couch was enough to cause her a headache, she would've long ago ceased to function, but at one corner of her office is the looming cabinet with a mountain of files on Red John that she and Van Pelt have yet to go through, and the excuse of a pending court case can last only so long with Jane. Combined that with the current case yielding no leads whatsoever, all of this is definitely leading to the headache-inducing state of things.

Still, she will persevere, for want of any better options.

Three minutes into a blissful silence which she utilizes fully to make a dent at the paperwork, Jane sneezes. Again.

He doesn't have a cold. He doesn't. She's _sure_.

Jane rolls over onto his back and moans. Loudly.

Well, she's _pretty _sure.

A full minute later, she throws her hands up, rummages through her cabinet to produce a bottle of Tynenol and brings it to Jane along with a cup of water.

"Thanks, Lisbon," says Jane, gratefully taking them both. "You're a god-send."

She sits at his side and reaches for his forehead. "No fever," she decides. "A little clammy, though."

Because it's par for the course for him to take a mile when you give him an inch, Jane shifts his head to lean into her hand eagerly. "Mm-hmm."

He looks pathetic and small, and sounds just about worse, which is how she knows—for certain, _damn_—he's indeed been faking it and she's fallen for it again. She reins in a sigh. "What I wouldn't give for you to have been properly bullied by an older sister growing up."

For a second, she imagines having a brother like Jane and shudders in complete and utter _horror of it all_. Jane grins at her tone, obviously knowing exactly what she's imagining, but whatever he's planned to say to annoy her is derailed by Cho and Rigsby at the doorway.

"Boss," Cho greets her blandly. Rigsby, who has no poker face to speak of, stares at her hand over Jane's forehead and proceeds to look uncomfortable, as if he's convinced he and Cho may possibly be intruding on something.

_Like what?_ Lisbon thinks to herself, irritated. "So?" she asks instead, retracting her hand and firmly placing it on her lap. "How did the interviews go? Anything to note?"

"Fairly standard," answers Cho. "The vic were well-regarded by the rest of the co-workers. They were shocked, some of them were quite beside themselves with grief. And no one seems to think she's been seeing anyone special, at least not within their knowledge." Cho stops, giving away nothing, but a short pause hints at something that Lisbon can't quite pinpoint.

And Jane isn't one to miss it. He's already sitting up, and there's this sparkle in his eyes, one that she's privately dubbed as _Danger, Will Robinson! _signal."Ah, but something—or someone—stood out, yes? Who was it?"

Cho and Rigsby share a look. Cho shrugs. "Her direct supervisor—the CEO of the vic's company—was the only one who didn't seem remotely affected. He seemed mostly indifferent to the news."

Lisbon considers that piece of information. "Rigsby?"

Rigsby nods in agreement. "Greg Jameson seems cold—too cold, somehow. I mean, I would've shown some more feelings for someone I've worked with for years, especially one that seems to have been so liked."

"You would," Jane points out, "because you are a good person and a decent human being. It doesn't necessarily follow that said decency is shared or even remotely universal." He casually proceeds to ignore Rigsby's low, muttered, "I knew _that_," and turns to Lisbon. "So, what would you say, Lisbon? Field trip?" He's practically batting his eyelashes.

She holds back a groan. Giving into him would be another positive reinforcement rewarding him for a behavior she clearly shouldn't be encouraging. Then again, she prefers this Jane—exuberant and forever scheming—over bored and lethargic. A bored Jane is a sight to behold, and also lethal to everyone, physically and mentally, including himself. Plus, it's a better lead than the ones they've got (read: none), which she has to admit, if extremely begrudgingly

Which is how she ends up on Greg Jameson's office with Jane, who no longer seems to show any sign of cold whatsoever, in tow.

Jameson is a pale-faced, lanky man, all around nondescript, and for a head of a graphic design company, the setting seems almost subdued. His office is not too dissimilar to the person who occupies it—clean, sparse, with minimal furnishing—and except for a few framed pictures and a couple of shelves filled with books, there isn't much that screams for attention. He's nothing but cordial and all around polite, though, showing them in after the introductions.

Jane waves off Jameson's proffered hand and proceeds directly to _hmm _and _ooh _at the company's designs that Jameson has up on his walls. Pretty much par for the course, yet again, so Lisbon begins to interview Eurydice Jackson's supervisor herself. Jameson is pretty young, perhaps a few years older than the vic has been—she'll have to get Van Pelt to run a full profile—but maybe a little too young to run a company this size. Family money, she thinks, judging by the expensive and impeccable suits and the stiff and controlled way he seems to carry himself, both of which are either inherited or learned over a length of time.

"What was Ms. Jackson's job description?" she asks, knowing the questions were already asked by Rigsby and Cho.

Jameson shows little hints of impatience, however. "She was one of our designers. We do a lot of commissioned works from outside, and she specialized on print ads."

"Did you personally work with her?"

"I worked with her on a number of projects," is all Jameson has to say.

"Do CEOs often supervise each little project their companies are commissioned?" Jane asks abruptly, pausing his examination of the book shelves behind Jameson.

Jameson adjusts his glasses but otherwise seems unfazed—patient, even. "I've been a CEO for a year. Before that, I was a project manager for five years. And I still approve every project that passes through our company."

"But did you like Eurydice's work?"

"Ms. Jackson's work was first-rate—"

Jane shakes his head, as impatient as Jameson isn't. "No, I mean _personally_. Did you see any value in them other than commercially? Did they—how do artists say this—_move _you?"

Jameson endures Jane's abrupt interruptions better than most, which is a surprise and possibly a strike against Jameson, Lisbon thinks. No sane human being should have enough patience with Jane when he's like this—no one with anything to hide, at any rate. But Jameson maintains his calm even in the face of Jane's aggravating behaviors designed precisely to provoke. "In all honesty, her works tend to have more esthetic values than commercial," Jameson answers after a short pause. "They were wasted on simple ads for local grocery stores, and sometimes off-mark because of how elaborate they are, but they had potential, and our clients loved her personal touches."

Lisbon is paying careful attention, but the answer itself betrays no emotion. Jane hmmphs dramatically again, and then catches her eyes and tosses his glance at one of the books on the top level of the shelf.

Then she sees it, too. Ovid. _The Metamorphoses_. She has only one guess as to what it'd be about, and given Jane's reaction, she's pretty sure her guess must be the right one. Her eyes, naturally, drift to Jameson's left hand: he's wearing a wedding ring.

She doesn't have to look at Jane to know what kind of expression he'd be wearing right now.

She turns to Jameson, deliberately casual. "Mr. Jameson, can you tell us where you were five nights ago, around midnight?"

There is no expected reaction of outrage or confusion. Instead, Jameson meets her eyes squarely. "I was home, sleeping." Like many regular people would be, seems to go unsaid.

"Was there anyone who can verify that? Your wife, perhaps?" she asks, nodding toward the ring he's wearing.

For the first time, something other than controlled indifference passes through the man's face. His eyes don't waver, but his voice does, slightly. "My wife passed away three years ago."

Lisbon pauses, but doesn't make a mistake of turning to Jane. There is no reason for Jameson to lie, when it'd be such an easy fact to confirm, but it doesn't fit the profile—admittedly convincing—that Jane has laid out as the victim's significant other. There isn't much else to be gained here at the moment, so she she nods and stands up. "Can you show us where Eurydice worked?"

Jameson complies without objection; so does Jane. Somehow, the latter surprises her more than the former.

The victim's cubicle was still up, as if no one has had the heart to go through it. It seems to Lisbon like a miniature version of the vic's apartment: the desk is tiny and clean, and other than a few pictures with colorful swirls of images, there are few that seem out of order.

As soon as Jameson leaves them, she corners Jane. "Spill," she orders.

Jane is pretending to be occupied with checking out the vic's drawing board. "What could you possibly mean?" he says, with a perfectly straight face that she would dearly like to stab at.

The very first chance she gets, she swears inwardly, and grits her teeth. "C'mon. Out with it. You're just bursting at the seams to tell me exactly what you thought of Jameson."

"You couldn't tell, Lisbon? I'm extremely disappointed in you. _Metamorphoses, Orpheus and Eurydice_. Hence, he _is _our Orpheus," Jane declares, with dangerous finality in his voice.

"What, just because he has a book by Ovid? Even I have a copy of it somewhere." Well, no, she actually doesn't, but still. "That doesn't prove anything."

Jane is looking at her incredulously, and after a second, she relents. At this point they both know she's just playing the devil's advocate for the hell of it. Jameson was definitely hiding something under his cool exterior; no one controls their emotions that tightly and to that extent unless there is something underneath they want so desperately to cover. "Okay, but we don't have a scrap of real evidence on whether he really was involved with Eurydice Jackson, or whether he was the one who killed her. And if he indeed did kill her, why? His wife died three years ago, so why would he even need to hide their affairs? No." She shakes her head. "There's be something more to it than that."

"Well, maybe you're right," Jane concedes, quite magnanimously. "There could be someone else."

Lisbon does a slight double take. "Wait, you really think so?"

"Nope," he says, grinning, and luckily for him her punch at his shoulder doesn't actually connect. "He fits, Lisbon. I mean, yes, it's still possible you may be right and there's someone else," he allows, still smug. "It's unlikely, but still possible."

_"_Oh, your _existence _is unlikely but still possible," she snaps, but it comes out mostly grumbling. "Okay, we'll check his records to see anything pops up back in the office."

Jane rubs his hands together, positively gleeful. "Most excellent."

They don't find anything revealing from Eurydice's desk—like the name of her paramour, for instance, because nothing easy ever happens—but that's nothing unexpected. When Lisbon's about to suggest they wrap up and leave, someone steps into the cubicle.

"Agent Lisbon? Mister Jane?"

The voice is actually familiar, and Lisbon turns and finds—of course, Penelope Jackson. Penelope Jackson. The victim's sister who looks like she's aged a decade over the last few days. Lisbon feels, rather than sees, how Jane's jaw hardens at the sight.

Penelope's carrying an empty cardboard box with her. The desk hasn't been cleared up yet for this reason, Lisbon thinks belatedly. "Penelope," she says, feeling helpless as she always does with victims' families when there is no answer she could give yet.

Penelope gives her a tired smile in greeting. "Agent Lisbon, I know I shouldn't be asking, that you would contact me when you can, but have you—" she trails off, reading the answer from their silence.

It's difficult for Lisbon to watch hope and expectation drain from Penelope's face, but she does, because that's the least she could do. "We'll do whatever we can to find who's responsible," Lisbon offers, even if it's so little that she could give. "We will" And she means it. As she does every time.

Penelope manages a halting, "Thank you." She steps around them, but turns around again at the last minute. "It's just, finding whoever did this to her isn't going to bring her back, you know? And I just"—her breath catches—"I just want my sister back." She buries her face into her hands, breaking into a shuddering sob.

_God_, thinks Lisbon, feeling her heart breaking along with Penelope's. _God_.

She holds Penelope until the sob subsides, until Penelope is able to pull herself together and give Lisbon a grateful thank-you. Lisbon offers to help packing, but Penelope declines gracefully, wanting to be alone in her grief, so Lisbon leaves her to it.

She isn't unused to this, comforting grieving relatives. But she isn't used to is turning around and finding Jane behind her, still watching. Jane usually slinks away from scenes like this, preferring to let her deal with grief-stricken families than standing witness to their pains that he already knows intimately well, and yet he's still here.

There's nothing on his face, no sympathy, no shared grief, not even well-hidden fury. Simply, absolutely, nothing.

It's even more terrifying than fury.

It lasts only for a few seconds. Jane, registering her, nods at her and gives her a grin that may look similar to his usual one except in his eyes. "All done?"

Somehow, it's difficult to find her voice. "Yes." It feels like a lie, somehow. "Let's head back."

They do. All the way back, Jane offers nothing but silence.

* * *

><p><em>I should have been a pair of ragged claws<em>

_Scuttling across the floors of silent seas. _

Jane barely manages not to give into the desire to fling the book against the wall. Instead, he reaches out to turn the light off and makes himself comfortable on the couch, letting the open book cover his face and making darkness even more complete.

He spends seconds and minutes listening to raindrops spatter against the window pane. There's nothing quite like a rainy night in San Sacramento that usually boasts sunlight. It's an example of cognitive dissonance. Not so unlike another thought that's been turning around on its head—they may have found their Orpheus, but Eurydice will never return from the dead.

The rain doesn't let up, and Jane distracts himself by the thought of building a moat. No one's an island, and yet the thought has an undeniable appeal.

Another cognitive dissonance.

This time, the dissonance is broken by quiet _tap, tap, tap _of clicking footsteps light against the floor.

He knows this sound, knows who it belongs to, knows how to let it comfort him, if he chooses to. Not tonight.

"Jane?" Lisbon prompts, her voice muted like the rest of the empty office.

She's here to kick him out, to get him to go home and order him to get some sleep. He chooses to deflect all of it by pretending to be asleep.

The sound of her footsteps stops in front of him. There's another _click_ sound; she's turned on the light.

"Jane," she says again, in a soft, sing-song voice. "I know you're awake."

Jane can claim, without an ounce of deception, that his control over his facial features is second to none, so he can continue on with his pretense even when he feels her tentative fingers lifting the book off his face, and even when he feels her eyes on his face.

Then, she pinches his nose.

"_Ow_." Jane cracks open one eye. "I was sleeping," he protests.

Lisbon's eyes are laughing. "No, you weren't," she says, sounding sure. She _is _sure. Well, almost sure, because when he gives her a wounded look, there's that smear, maybe a flicker, of doubt in her eyes.

_This_, he thinks, almost despairingly. This impossible gullibility of hers even after all these years. But even more despairing may be that he, too, still finds it impossibly endearing. She's an intelligent, capable woman, and she should know better than to trust him. Anyone who knows him as well as she does should know better. She _does _know better.

And yet. And still.

The moment becomes unbearable, so he pulls her by her jacket lapels until she stumbles and falls face-first onto the couch with an _oomph_.

There's a significant pause. "Jane," she says, her tone low and dangerous.

He affects a perfectly innocent face. "Yes, Lisbon?"

"You do know I carry a sidearm and have no qualms about using it against you, yes? It's actually _extremely _overdue, in fact."

"Nah," he dismisses the idea with a small wave of his hand, "you won't shoot an unarmed man."

"But you're _always _an exception to the rule, Jane," she grouches, rolling over, and scowls at him. "Scoot over."

He allows a half suppressed smile and shifts a little to make more room for her. She settles comfortably on the couch next to him.

They both listen to the rain fall.

"His story checks out," says Lisbon, quieter now. "His wife did die three years ago. Cancer. Doesn't look like there was any foul play involved, but we're looking into it."

"Good," he says, for want of something to say. Greg Jameson was the man Eurydice was in love with, Jane knows it like he knows many other things that he gleans from every little fragment of themselves that people give off.

But knowing that, and catching the killer, what does that accomplish? Penelope's sister is still dead and isn't coming back. Penelope can wait as long as her namesake has, but nothing will bring her back. Just like nothing will bring his family back. He's always known that.

He has.

_Scuttling across the floors of silent seas. _

"You're maudlin lately," says Lisbon, as always bringing him down to earth in the gentlest way she can imagine. She sounds off-hand but is anything but. He doesn't turn to her, but she does. "We'll find who did this, you know. If it's Jameson, then we'll get him. If it's someone else, then we'll catch whoever it is. We always do."

What it would be like, Jane wonders, to be sure. To be held by such belief. He can calculate people's reactions and their subsequent behaviors to reasonable certainty, but Lisbon's unswerving belief in justice is, as always, startling, even touching.

And unsettling that he still has a room for such sentiment.

It's too easy to let the quiet of the moment subsume him, too difficult not to watch Lisbon at the edge of his vision.

"Jane," says Lisbon, again. A hand on his arm, warm and insistent, tells him she's worried for him, again, and is trying hard not to be.

She smells like clean soap. She looks like a vision of spring in winter.

And for one moment, all his thoughts and his faculties turn disobedient. He reaches out, unthinking, and his fingers end up tangled in her dark hair.

_Help me_, he wants to say. _Save me_.

And no doubt, she would come to his rescue in a heartbeat.

Even now, with surprise plain in her eyes and a puzzled frown making its way onto her face, she remains still, waiting. Perhaps thinking it another trick of his, another mishap of his design. And yet, waiting.

It would be easy, to reach out a little further. To reach out and cross the mercurial distance that he's intentionally maintained just to keep her at an arm's length. He can picture the next few seconds clearly, the next few seconds that would unfold if he dared enough—her tilted head, surprise turning into shock in her wide eyes. He can almost hear it, too—a catch in her voice, an awkward pause she might mask by biting her lower lip, just before his fingers brush the side of her face, just before he leans in for a kiss. And the tenderness he might find in all of it, maybe even comfort. She wouldn't stop him, because she might view it as inevitability. She might even welcome it.

And it will be the biggest mistakes she'll ever make.

It won't be the biggest mistake for him, only because he's already made one too many.

(Ahab, in his search for Moby Dick, dragged down the rest of the crew to the bottom of the ocean. But sinking, Jane tells himself, that can be done alone. You could do it alone.

You _will _do it alone.)

_Help me_, he wants to say. _Save me_.

But even he can't be that selfish.

Jane, who has never been accused of being selfless and will never be, does the impossible: he lets go. Her hair, wispy, slips between his fingers, like so many other things he may have held dear.

She looks startled, not so unlike how he's imagined. She averts her eyes, hiding whatever feelings they might have held. She, too, lets go of his arm, carefully tucking away the wayward strands of her hair behind her ears.

He's not disappointed. He isn't. Unlike a quick, ephemeral glimpse of joy and happiness, this is the kind of luxury he can't deserve. So he will only commit the warmth of her hand to his memory, even knowing that this, too, will fade.

"Jane," she says, finally finding her voice.

It takes effort, but he smiles a little and waves. "Go on first. I'll be a little while."

Only the slightly hesitance in her answering smile shows she's not entirely unrattled, not completely able to brush aside the previous moment as yet another of those concocted by Patrick Jane, forever nebulous and changeable. The worry in her voice and in her face, sadly, still remains the same. "You'll go home, though," she presses.

"Of course," he lies.

Or perhaps they both do, because she determinedly accepts the blatant lie. Still, she says, "Good night, Jane," and means it. He registers her hand on his shoulder briefly before the warmth recedes again.

"Good night, Lisbon," he repeats dutifully, and watches as she turns on her heels. Watches as she walks away.

Outside, rain patters against the glass windows, rhythmic, he thinks, and maybe even consoling.

Once the echoes of her footsteps die out, he turns off the light. It's not dark enough. It's never dark enough.

The world tilts and sways again, spinning in whichever direction it wants to, and Patrick Jane remains still.

* * *

><p><strong>TBC<strong>


	5. Chapter 5

_She sees Jane, who can cheerfully pluck people's thoughts from thin air. She sees Jane, a quietly sad man who zealously guards his sorrow and refuses to share it with anyone else._

* * *

><p>Lisbon can feel her eyebrow rising way up, entirely of its own volition. "Nothing?"<p>

"Nothing," confirms Van Pelt. She sounds confident, and Lisbon doesn't doubt her for a second. The note that Van Pelt has put together suggests only one conclusion: Timothy Carter has no connection to at least two of the earlier and confirmed Red John murders. It's not conclusive by any means, but it does confirm one, or a few theories on Red John—or on his seemingly endless vines of followers, or the Murderous Sociopaths Anonymous, whichever one would choose to address them.

And, so, then. _What now? What can I possibly run with this? _

They're all waiting for the other shoe to drop, waiting for Red John or his cohorts kill again. She knows it, her team knows it, _Jane _definitely knows it. They have to change the state of play, or else nothing will change. But how?

The question hits her harder than it should. She's expected the investigation to be slow-going, its progress as well as process to be fully frustrating, yet the exhaustion she feels in all of this seems wholly unexpected. Maybe it's the lack of sleep steadily catching up to her. She may have lectured Jane over his refusal to sleep, but it's another fine example of "do as I say, not as I do" she's demonstrating right here. Still, considering Jane's provided most, if not all, of the causes for her insomnia—

_Jane_. She eyes the empty couch in the bullpen. He wasn't in when she came in the morning, and he's still not in. She hopes he'd gone home the night before, not just haunting all the dark corners of the office building like he's more apt to do, but she's long ago learned that when it comes to Jane, her hopes and expectations never end up on the same side of the spectrum.

"Boss?" Van Pelt asks. Her voice is cautious, if not alarmed. "You okay?"

Lisbon blinks away the sluggish haze that seems to fog her vision and musters a smile. "Great work," she tells Van Pelt, and means it even more when Grace looks so unguardedly pleased at the praise.

They have little time for their little side project as it is, but Van Pelt has been conducting meticulous and careful research, putting the timelines together and picking up slack when Lisbon could mostly afford to concentrate on their current case, which is back to the starting point, once again. There's no way to prove or disprove whether Jameson was the mysterious boyfriend of the victim's, at least not without the man's own admission, which he's unlikely to give. They questioned the coworkers and friends, but nothing—Eurydice kept her secret all too well. The motel room couldn't contain any useful evidence, already cleaned and having been occupied by others. She's sent out Cho and Rigsby to question the motel staff once again, but at this point it's mostly to cover the basis.

Lisbon studies photos from the case file again. The only one not from the crime scene is a picture of her provided by her sister. Eurydice Jackson had a serious, delicate face that used to come alive with a smile. Used to. _What happened to you? _Lisbon asks, as she's done many times to the pictures of hundreds of other victims. And as always, no one answers back.

But the much-needed break comes later, just when Van Pelt is about to summarize the third set of analyses on the data available on Red John.

"They remember seeing him before," Rigsby announces as he enters the bullpen, each step hardly masking excitement. "At the motel. At least two of the staff actually recall seeing Jameson. They don't think they saw him with the vic—he came in by himself and left by himself, apparently—but at least they confirm seeing him two or three times within the last couple of months. Oh, and get this." Rigsby stops and looks at Cho, who picks it right up.

"His wife's parents are still ostentatiously the owner of the company that Jameson operates." Cho sounds considerably calm compared to Rigsby, but even a slightly brighter tone of his voice practically equates to bouncing on the floor for Cho. "They've been on the board of directors for the parent company for decades. Greg Jameson has no other family on his side, and he's been living with them in their old family mansion in the suburb even after his wife passed away."

Lisbon slowly takes in the information. It's good, very good, almost cinching the facts together, but it's not quite as neat as it could be. Even if Jameson was the mysterious boyfriend, and even if he was sneaking around so his former in-laws wouldn't find out about his affair, what could be the motive for killing her? And why at a dingy street corner where drug dealers frequent? There are too many questions to chalk it all up as a crime of passion, either. "Do we know if there was a pre-nup or something equally legally binding?" she asks, building a test scenario together. "Anything dictating that once he's in a new relationship, it'd cost him the company even after the wife's death?"

"Don't know yet, but we'll find out," Cho promises.

"Oh, indeed we will," Jane pipes up, turning the corner and appearing like a mirage out of the thin air.

Jane takes a sweeping look at the team, beaming brightly. Lisbon lets out a breath she didn't know she'd been holding, and then immediately berates herself for it. After all, there's been no reason to worry over him anyway. He looks sunny and sounds cheerful, without the lack of sleep taking visible tolls on him—unlike _her_—and he's showing no sign of the odd mood swings that seem to seize him as of late.

The begrudging resentment, though, quickly gets edged out by trepidation at the idea of Jane attempting to find out about the pre-nup, and all the dramatic flouncing, grand gestures and some impressive fits that would inevitably follow some clever schemes Jane must be devising in his head right now. "No, no, no." She shakes her head emphatically just in case the last three no's haven't gotten across. "If we do this, we're doing it right. No funny business."

"Uh-huh, sure, whatever you say, Lisbon. So, do we go talk to Jameson or do we bring him in?" Jane _is _still beaming and he sounds just about the same, but he isn't looking at her, even when he's talking directly to her.

If she didn't know any better, she might conclude that he's avoiding her, but she does know better, so she pushes away the stray thought and tugs at his wrist until he faces her fully. "No funny business, Jane, you hear me?"

Only then his eyes slide over to meet hers, and abruptly she feels her hand freeze in midair. There's something incongruently quiet about his eyes that takes her back to the night before, to the feel of gentle fingers brushing her hair away from her face—that she can't, she won't, think about right now, not in the middle of the office, surrounding by her team, in the bright daylight that conceals nothing.

She lets her hand fall and watches his face just as something else clicks in place, dislodging the look in his eyes as quickly as it's appeared. "Of course not. No funny business," Jane echoes solemnly, a perfect imitation of an errand child being thoroughly chastised. "No funny business, no dilly-dallying, I swear."

And then Lisbon has to grapple with a sudden urge to shake him, and not just because she doesn't believe a word that comes out of his mouth. She's always preferred this Jane—bouncing with boundless energy and dealing out sharp words slick and fast like quicksilver—over the other Jane she knows, a quietly sad man who zealously guards his sorrow and refuses to share it with anyone else.

But this Jane, this blindingly brilliant Jane that she always finds difficult to look away from, is only one of his many faces, the facade he likes to adorn for his convenience, and she wants—

Wants what? Something not feigned? Something real? From Patrick Jane? It's a ridiculous, laugh-out-loud concept. Since when did she begin assume that she suddenly has a right to demand from him something that isn't just a front? More to the point, when did she begin to think he might _let _her?

She needs to collect herself, so she clears her throat and rolls her eyes for effect. "Honestly, why do I bother?" she mutters, and it's moderately successful. At least, it doesn't come out as embarrassingly plaintive.

Jane grins like there's nothing more delightful. "Ah, so you _are _finally learning, grasshopper."

"Call me grasshopper one more time and I _am _shooting you," she growls, ignores Jane's quick miming of zipping his lips together, and turns to the rest of the team. "Bring in Jameson. Let's hear what he has to say."

Jameson, it turns out, has little to say, but what little he does say, he does it oh so unfortunately well.

"You lied to us, Mr. Jameson," she starts, seated across from him in the interrogation room. Everyone except Jane is watching from the other side of the glass. Jane, for his part, has taken up his favorite looming position at the corner of the room.

Jameson, Lisbon has to admit, is sharp enough to realize that there would be no point in hedging. He offers them a thin-lipped smile instead. "I suppose I did."

"So, you _were _there at the motel with Eurydice Jackson the night she was murdered," Lisbon presses.

"I met her at the motel around nine-thirty that night, yes, and we were together for about an hour." His words are measured and matter-of-fact. "She left before I did, about ten-thirty or maybe just before eleven."

"On foot?" asks Lisbon, sounding dubious even to her own ears.

"She usually took a cab, so I assumed she called for a taxi while I was in the shower."

"She didn't that night. We checked."

That doesn't faze Jameson. "I assumed she did. My assumption turned out to be incorrect."

His face is carefully blank and Lisbon stares him for a moment. Usually prolonged silence alone is enough to make a suspect squirm in their chair, but Jameson bears it well without showing any crack for her to explore. So she goes right to the point. "Why did you lie, Mr. Jameson?"

Jameson has his answer ready, and he provides it without a single change in his inflection. "My reputation. The scandal could hurt the company and my position within it as well as hers, so we kept it in secret."

"Oh, really?" Jane takes a step forward, speaking up for the first time. There's an exaggerated tilt of his head that's supposed to signify curiosity, but it's more sardonic than anything else. "Does your company take fraternization between employees _that _seriously?"

"She was my subordinate," Jameson says simply. "It would've been frowned upon and would've reflected badly."

"Ah," says Jane. "On you, or on her?"

"On both of us. The company CEO fraternizing with an employee he was supervising wouldn't have looked right. And she would've been put in a difficult position among her co-workers for dating the boss."

"Ah," says Jane, once again, quite understandingly. "So you were just exercising proper gallantry."

The acidic words, dripping with contempt, should've done some damage, but they barely make an impact. Jameson lifts his eyes to meet Jane's, but there's no expected outburst or expression of outrage. He looks away, simply choosing not to respond.

That won't do, so Lisbon barrels forward. "So, you two were seeing each other. On a regular basis."

"Yes," Jameson answers, still impeccably measured.

"For how long?"

"For about a year. We got closer after we worked on our company's first commissioned project for the city together."

"And she was in love with you," she summarizes, less like a question than a statement.

That, unexpectedly, scores a hit. Jameson's expression shifts, holding something other than casual indifference he's diligently retained so far. Jane, too, notices. She knows it, because Jane's wearing his fine-tuned _well, now_ look that he has on just before he pounces on an unsuspecting prey.

"Naturally," Jane says when Jameson offers no answer. "She was in love with you, but you weren't. No man in love would ever let a woman he loves take a step into that seedy motel unfit for any kind of company sharing affection. So, no, you weren't in love."

Jameson doesn't rise to meet the implicit challenge, but his glance turns colder, icier, when he regards Jane. "Maybe I wasn't. Maybe I was. I still didn't kill her."

"And you're maintaining that, even though you have no alibi to speak of?" Lisbon asks, not bothering to hide her incredulous tone.

There's an odd, disquieting expression on Jameson's face that she still doesn't know what to make of. When he speaks up again, whatever cracks they might've managed to open up seem plastered close again. "Yes, I am."

Lisbon decides to try something else. "Did your in-laws know about your relationship with Eurydice?"

That earns her Jameson's full attention. He studies her before he answers. "Now _you_ are making incorrect assumptions. My keeping our relationship secret had nothing to do with Sarah, or her parents."

"Did they?" she asks again, flatly. "Yes or no?"

"No, they didn't," he admits easily.

"And why not?"

"Because it has nothing to do with them," Jameson says slowly, as if it's him who needs to scrape the very last bit of patience to carry on this entire conversation, not Lisbon. "You're wrong if you believe that to be the case. Someone else killed Eurydice, and you are wasting your time with me." He holds her gaze, steadfast and unwavering. "Is there anything else you wish to ask?"

Lisbon sees, in the corner of her eyesight, the way Jane is considering Jameson, which alarms her a little. Before she could say anything, though, Jane proceeds to shrug and say, "Nah, not really."

Jameson turns to Lisbon. "Then, since you know where to find me when you have more than just circumstantial evidence to accuse me of a murder and want to charge me with something concrete, may I leave?"

She throws a quick dart of a glare at Jane, but it doesn't even register. And it's a moot point anyway, because Jane isn't exactly wrong. There aren't any more questions to ask, and holding Jameson now would be a pointless exercise.

Lisbon lets him go, if reluctantly; when they're finished, her team slowly gravitates toward her and gathers in her office.

"That didn't exactly go well," says Van Pelt.

"No, it didn't," Lisbon agrees with feeling. "Cho?" she prompts, trying not to sound too hopeful.

Cho's shaking his head. "His family lawyers are stalling and refusing to give us anything about the pre-nup, at least not until Steven and Rachel Patterson, Sarah Jameson's parents, return from their trip overseas."

"They are cutting the trip short after finding out that their son-in-law could be suspected of a murder," Rigsby adds. "Evidently, they're quite upset."

"It'd upset me if my son-in-law turns out to be a murderer," Van Pelt points out.

"Um, no, actually." If a grownup man can be described as squirming while standing perfectly still, Rigsby's doing a fairly decent job to qualify. "They're upset on _behalf _of him. They believe he would never hurt anyone, let alone murder a woman he worked with. And they insist Jameson's still grieving, after all these years, so he should be left well enough alone. They're coming back to make sure that he is. Left alone. By us, I mean."

"Good grief," Jane harrumphs loudly, stretching widely on her couch. He's already got himself a cup of tea in one hand, and doesn't at all look concerned. "A fine rigmarole we find ourselves in, isn't it, Lisbon?"

Lisbon thinks for a second. She's an officer of the law, and it's against that very law to shoot an unarmed man who doesn't pose an immediate threat. That still holds true, just as it did last night. So, shooting Jane in front of all these witnesses is truly not an option.

"Someone else in the family has to know about the terms of their pre-nup," Van Pelt suggests, neatly diverting Lisbon from giving into homicidal urges. "Maybe we can go talk to the friends of Sarah Jameson's."

"And we need to find the gun," says Cho. "Where did he get the gun? If we can trace the ballistics, we may be able to get somewhere."

"Cho's right," Lisbon decides. "Finding the terms of the pre-nup may help, but Jameson isn't wrong. Even if the terms stated that the company would default back to the wife's family once he begins any other relationship, that's still all circumstantial and it proves close to nothing. We need a solid piece of evidence."

Jane casually takes a sip of his tea. "Oh, ye with so little faith. When has that pesky little thing like the lack of evidence ever stopped us?"

Shooting him, Lisbon decides, may still be an option.

She shuts her eyes, counts till ten in French, and issues her orders. "Van Pelt, you take the Pattersons angle. Rigsby, let's test our luck once again and check whether anyone's seen Jameson in the area the vic was killed. Cho, you get the ballistics and check whether the gun that was used to kill the vic was used in any other crime. I'll check with the DAs, see if there's anything we can use to pump the family lawyers for information. Jane, anything you want to contribute?" she adds the last part pointedly.

Jane, apparently having decided that testing how close Lisbon can be pushed into breaking the law would be a fun way to end his life, doesn't even look up while flipping through the book on his lap. "Oh, you're doing all so well all by yourselves. No need for my help, I think. Do go on and proceed as usual."

Lisbon is rather proud of how quick on the uptake her agents are. And there's no better example of it than how, after staring at Jane for a second and spending half that long on Lisbon, all three of them opt to leave her office as quickly as humanly possible.

She shuts the door and whips around to face Jane. "If you already know how to corner Jameson but holding out on me on this, I swear I'd—"

"Ooooh," Jane says expectantly, looking up from the book and training his twinkling eyes on her, "you'd what? You'd what, Lisbon?"

He's goading her. Of course he is. There is a price to be paid being the only witness to Patrick Jane's moments of weakness. Lisbon sighs and runs a hand down her face. "Whatever you're planning, just try to tread carefully, okay?"

"What makes you assume that I have a plan ready?" Jane raises one expert eyebrow at her, reaching for his tea again. "As flattering as it may be to let you go on thinking I always have everything figured out, I haven't the foggiest idea where to go from here, truly. And since when does this whole rich, influential people exercising their undue influence worry you, Lisbon?"

"It doesn't." Well, it's not just that, at least. Something else doesn't quite fit about this entire scenario, and she can't put her finger on it. And Jameson— "Just try to take a different approach, for this once," she implores. "Pick the path of the least resistance. Try not to irk so many people if at all avoidable. I know how much of an ordeal that will be for you, not being as aggravating as you can possibly be, but do it as a favor, to me."

Jane stares at her, thoughtful and considering, above the rim of his blue teacup. It's a look she loves to hate. Or hate to love. One of these days, she'll figure out which. She's _dreading _the day when she'll figure out which.

"Ah," he says, making it sound like a quiet _Eureka_! so she knows it's going to be bad. And her prediction is proven correct, because he follows it with: "You feel that Jameson earned some compassion. Because he's a widow."

_Just like I am_ may be on the tip of his tongue, but he doesn't have to say it out loud for her to hear it.

She shouldn't have to remind him of this. She really shouldn't have to, but he's making her. Damn him. "No," she snaps, "because if he isn't our killer, then he's lost two women in his lives already and there's no reason to make it more difficult for him."

But Jane, of course, isn't done. "You want me to be considerate. You want me to be kind. You want me to be a _good_ man," Jane says, and he sounds regretful. Genuinely, _movingly_ regretful, drawing a fine line between an act and a display of honesty, and she sees, not for the first time, how good a con man Patrick Jane really is. "That's very sweet of you, Lisbon. Misguided, but sweet, nonetheless."

The patronizing tone sets her teeth on edge, even when she knows that this is only Jane's—annoyingly effective—defensive mechanism in a full swing. "You already are a good man," she says, consciously trying to un-grit her teeth.

He looks at her in frank disbelief.

"Okay," she concedes, "so maybe at times you can be a selfish and egotistical _ass_—"

"Why, _Lisbon_," he says, mock-affronted by the accusation.

"—but that doesn't mean you can't be both," she concludes, as firmly as she can and leaving no room for further discussion. "You can tell yourself whatever you want, that you don't care, if that makes things easier for you, but that doesn't change who you are, deep down."

For a second, she thinks she sees that quiet look returning to his eyes again, but in another moment, Jane is ruefully shaking head. "After all these years, your naiveté still astounds me. Really, Lisbon. You should know better."

It's not just the words themselves. Not just the words, but the softly chiding tone of his voice accompanying the abject pity in his eyes that actually stings. So, he's been aiming to hurt. To hurt, to claw back, to push her away.

She's not unused to this Jane, either, and the thing to do would've been grabbing him by the shoulders and shaking him until he's startled of his practiced mask, and then thoroughly making him pay for his audacity to pull a fast one on her. But she still feels the sting somewhere inside her that she's stupidly left unguarded, so when the question slips out of her, it's mostly an unthinking, unplanned act:

"When are you going to forgive yourself?"

Unthinking, unplanned, and she can't reel it back in.

Jane doesn't freeze, like she does, because he has too much control over himself, but she feels his pause, the way he quiets into stillness.

"You didn't kill your family, Jane." This should count as the world's most unnecessary reminder, but the words stumble out of her anyway, even when this entire conversation is rapidly spiraling out to where neither of them wants it to go.

And she only realizes the extent of her mistake when Jane says, "No." His voice is taut. "Red John did."

She almost shuts her eyes, just then. She knows what follows after his line, even though it's never been uttered: _And I let him._

She can see the words written on his face, even when not a single word has been uttered to be avowed again. _Red John killed my family, and I let him. _Over and over and over to himself. Every time unsaid, every time a reminder and just as punishing, and—

Words, still stumbling, are stuck somewhere inside her chest. If only a right assembly of words, given to him at the right moment, could ease his pain and solve all their problems. If only—

But Jane never gives her a chance. "You look tired," he tells her, sounding almost normal again. "You should go home early and get some rest." Normal, and almost gentle, even though the walls have drawn up around him once again, heavy and impenetrable. "And you're right—we'll catch the killer, one way or another, like we always do."

He turns around to leave, and in his profile, she sees Jane, who can cheerfully pluck people's thoughts from thin air. She sees Jane, a quietly sad man who zealously guards his sorrow and refuses to share it with anyone else. Not even with her.

And the words become unstuck, just when he opens the door.

"For once, Jane, let me win," she asks him, because seeing him breaks her heart. "For once, let yourself off the hook."

His hand on the doorknob stills. He doesn't turn to see her, and for a long moment, he doesn't move from the doorway.

When he finally does, he turns around just a little, but he doesn't meet her eyes. "Like I said, Lisbon." A quick grin he grants her is not a happy kind. It never really is with him. "I'm not a good man."

This time, she doesn't—can't—stop him when he crosses the doorway.

Not even when he closes the door, leaving her behind.

* * *

><p><strong>TBC<strong>

* * *

><p>AN: I am so amazed that some of you are still following the story, despite the sporadic updates that happen at a snail's pace (well, a snail would've been faster, really). I do have the ending written, and I have a little more time now, so I hope to wrap it up before the next season. Thanks for the lovely comments and all your kind encouragement. They're much appreciated!


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